the personal blog of Greg Bassett, adventures in travel, endurance sports and general cruft

Last week was a big training week. Good volume, lots of running and some nice results. Tuesday’s interval session called for 7×4.5 min/1min jog Z4. I figured out how to program the Garmin 305, then went outside for the run. All the intervals were under 7:00/mile.

Friday through Sunday were big, big days for me. This week started my Friday, 3-a-day sessions. Swim in the morning, (following a 4:00am alarm) lower body weights at noon, run in the afternoon. The Friday swim was a 5,000 yd set:

400 w/u

200 swim/200 paddle pull

300 swim/300 paddle pull

400 swim/400 paddle pull

500 swim/500 paddle pull

200 c/d

1600 straight swim, 1:30 pace

I took it a bit easy on the lower body workout, and skipped the core sets. I figured the pull sets in the morning were enough.

The evening run was a 1:30 run, with 40 min of marathon pace at the 45 min point. However, once I got onto the run, my pace was just a bit above marathon pace, so I just kept pushing. Here are the laps (per mile, pacing session starts around mile 5)

Lap (#)

Time (m:s)

Distance (mi )

M Spd (mph)

HR (bpm)

Energy (Cal)

Avg

Max

1

9:15

1.00

8.1

132

143

117

2

9:03

1.00

7.7

146

151

119

3

9:00

1.00

7.5

145

151

118

4

9:36

1.00

8.0

145

151

119

5

8:55

1.00

8.0

146

153

118

6

8:52

1.00

8.0

151

156

119

7

8:50

1.00

11.1

155

162

118

8

8:47

1.00

7.8

155

160

119

9

8:44

1.00

7.6

158

164

118

10

5:26

0.60

8.9

157

164

71

The kicker here is that my avg HR was spot-on for the pace, even with two workouts earlier in the day. I was stoked after this run.

Saturday morning, I had planned to ride with Liberty Cycle. The alarm went off at 6:00am, and I heard thunder and rain. So I went back to bed until 8:00. When I got up, the rain had stopped and the sun started to peek out. I found a 40 mile, B pace group ride from Bed One with MAFW, so I threw the Surley on the car and drove to the start.

When I took the Surly off the car, one of the other riders commented that I must be a strong rider to bring an SUV to a B paced ride.

Once we got on the road, the B group broke up into a B+ and B- groups. I decided to see how long I could hang with the B+ guys, given the extra weight and road-resistance of the Surley. As it turns out, I was able to hang with them quite well. I got blown out the back on any sort of climb, but I was able to hammer the descents and flats to get back with the group. My bike fitness isn’t close to what it needs to be for IMLP, but base aerobic fitness and the ability to hammer and recover quickly is right there.

I finished the 40 miler with a 17.5 mph average, then headed out on my hour run to finish the brick. Nothing noteworthy about the run, other than the temps were climbing and it was pretty darn humid. 6.2 miles, 9:46 pace on a slightly rolling loop.

Sunday was the “big day” on my workout calendar: A 3:15 Z1-Z2 run was planned, but I wanted to meet up with the NJRRC and run 20 miles on the NJM course. I have demons to slay on 4 May, and I wanted to visit their lair prior to the big day.

So another 4:00am alarm got me up and moving. I got down to Long Branch w/out any problem, did my “business” and lined up to run the course with a bunch of other runners. My legs were pretty shelled from Friday & Saturday, and I was feeling a bit run-down. My plan was to pace at 10:00-10:30 per mile and see how I felt.

After a couple of miles the legs started to open up a bit, but they never felt “good”. I just kept a nice smooth pace, focused on memorizing the course, and ignoring anyone who passed me. I also wanted to nail down my nutrition. I had to pee at the 3 mile mark, and again at the 13 mile mark, so I knew my fluid intake was pretty good. I took 4 hammer gel packs, some Endurolytes and Anti-Fatigue caps. In hindsight, I would have liked to have had one more gel for the 20 miles, and will definintely need 2 more for the full marathon. Depending on the heat, I may not need all the Endurolytes, and I should only need 4-5 AF caps.

I was crusing along around the 14 mile mark, where I saw three people who started the run with me earlier in the morning. They were about 1/4 mile up the road from me. They had dropped me when I stopped to pee at the 3 mile mark. I decided to stretch my legs a bit and see if I could catch them in the next mile, but only increase my pace to 9:00/mile. To my surprise my legs answered the call. In fact, I started to feel better from the small acceleration. It felt good to just lengthen my stride a bit. I caught them with no problem and cruised along to the next mile marker. I shut it down at that point, and went back to my normal pace for the rest of the run. I ended up with a tick over 20 miles, 9:54 pace.

I did have some problems with my left shoe. I started getting some pain in the tendon at the top of my foot. This started on Friday, and got worse on Sunday. I stopped to adjust it, and finally just ignored it as it came and went. Most of the time there was no problem, but occassionaly it would be a sharp pain. After I got home I noticed that the base of the tendon, where it met my foot was pretty sore and swolen. I’ll need to get this checked out before the big day.

I’m cautiously optimistic about the marathon on 4 May. I know that anything can happen on that day, but I feel good as I head into the taper.